Collaborative portraits

It might seem from these posts that the work for Festival of Quilts is happening in a very haphazard fashion. Working on lots of things at once does suit my easily-bored, butterfly mind. I think at the moment I have 21 pieces underway which sounds completely ludicrous now I count them and write it down! And that's not even including the ones that are fairly fully-formed in my mind's eye but don't actually exist at the moment.

What matters for me is that I'm working at a pace and I find that is inevitably fruitful. Making work, spurs new work and quickly snowballs. My work is about my life and so it's quite natural that my life contributes to the outcome in many ways. Not least that this week it's the school holidays and so the apprentice is in the studio with me while I (try to) work. Coincidentally, I'd seen this 'hilarious' meme on Twitter, which set me thinking...

I think we've all had days like that.

So I began to think about how I would draw my self portrait and how Amelie might draw me. I thought it could be a fun exercise to work on a 50/50 portrait. I wasn't sure how it would work out, whether we could technically do it, and whether the results would be good to look at.

We worked together on two and I LOVE them both.

Please excuse the dodgy, rather hastily taken photos!

Amelie thought I did way too much 'colouring in' and shading. She prefers a more economical use of line. I wish I could have that 5-year-old confidence!

So these two pieces are now definitely part of the line-up for This is Everything we Are. At the moment they are smallish prints on fabric. I'm not sure they'll stay just like this, but for now they'll stay up on the studio wall while I think about them.

Hope you're having a creative week.

Bye for now,

Laura

x